Posts Tagged ‘Maoism’

Fifty years after India’s first Naxalite uprising, the Maoist movement today has nearly disintegrated, with several movement leaders now dead, arrested or having surrendered. Ajay Gudavarthy’s edited collection of essays raises the vital question at this juncture: Is violence necessary for revolutionary change in a democracy? While not being completely dismissive of the ideology or the exigencies driving the movement on the ground, the book presents perspectives both from within and outside the Maoist movement illuminating its raison d’être as also limitations.

An Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Gudavarthy sets the tone for the book in the introductory essay outlining arguments in favour of, as also critical of Maoist violence. While acknowledging that violence is seen as a less viable strategy in allowing for contesting ideas in a democracy, he argues that Maoists are in armed conflict with the Indian state because while democracy initiates a complex process of inclusion and exclusion, there continues to be a minority that is necessarily structurally produced, which the promise of democracy fails to lure. For Maoists, revolutionary violence is a necessary mode of political mobilisation to counter the structural violence of the current political system.

While democratic sensibilities urge us to disapprove of such violence, Gudavarthy reminds us of the other forms of violence endemic to Indian democracy such as caste and religion-based violence. Raising this in the context of the 2002 Gujarat riots, the author argues that citizens in Gujarat elected the same government that oversaw the riots thrice. Yet, why is Maoist violence represented as more endemic while other forms of violence are seen as episodic, he asks? Various essays in this volume revisit this logic of revolutionary violence.

About Author

The author is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has over 10 years’ work experience as a journalist and a communications consultant.